Department News

Newsletter of the Department of Electrical Engineering

Marcus, Shayman Host Workshop on Network Management

Professors Steven Marcus (EE/ISR), Mark Shayman (EE/ISR), and Aurel Lazar (Columbia University) hosted the Workshop on Network Management on June 11, at the University of Maryland.

The program, jointly sponsored by the National Security Agency and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, attracted more than 100 attendees from industry, government and academia.

Topics for the workshop included: Java in Network Management, Network Management Using Dsitributed Object Technologies, Network Programming on the xband Broadband Kernel, and Telecommunications Management Network Models and Standards.

Multidisciplinary Semiconductor Manufacturing Process Research Project Features EE Faculty Member

Prof. Steven Marcus (EE/ISR) and three other Maryland faculty members launched the Operational Methods in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Integrating Product Dynamics and Process Models (IPDPM) project.

This three-year, $1.2 million, interdisciplinary project focuses on the development of new operational methods for efficient semiconductor manufacturing operations throughout the entire wafer fab life cycle. The project was brought together under the auspices of the Institute for Systems Research, and is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corporation.

The project includes research in Markov decision processes, optimization, planning and scheduling, discrete event simulation, sensitivity analysis, manufacturing process simulation, response surface models, and other operations research and manufacturing systems topics.

Marcus’s research aims to create a Markov Decision Process (MDP) model that defines the state, actions, and randomness associated with fab-level decision making; and methods that develop optimal policies for fab-level decision making.

“The idea is that there are technology shifts in semiconductor devices,” said Marcus. “Fab managers subsequently have to make important decisions about how much of the manufacturing equipment to allocate towards making a new product, how much to use in making an old product, and when to purchase new equipment. This MDP technology outputs optimal values for various production levels based on the current state of the system.”

Marcus’s research represents the higher decision-making level of the wafer fab process, while other project investigators are simultaneously conducting research at the operations and manufacturing levels of semiconductor manufacturing. The project investigators interact closely with the Semiconductor Research Corporation’s members (including IBM, Texas Instruments, and Advanced Micron Devices) to ensure that the project’s research maintains its relevance to real-world semiconductor manufacturing needs.

Other Maryland investigators for the IPDPM project include: Prof. Michael Fu (BGMT/ISR, Principal Investigator); Prof. Gary W. Rubloff (MNE/ISR); and Prof. Jeffrey Herrmann (ME/ISR).